Best Buy CEO: We ‘Love’ Being Used As The Internet’s Showroom

One of the big challenges facing consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is the practice of “showrooming” — shoppers using the company’s chain of expensive-to-run physical stores as a place to check out a product, then going home and ordering it from a cheaper online retailer.

With shrinking same-store sales and falling profits, the company’s new CEO, Hubert Joly, needs to deal with the showrooming phenomenon. But one thing he made clear today in a visit to the WSJ mother ship: Best Buy has no beef with the idea of being used as a physical front-of-house for online retail.